


Lazarus Pays a Visit

by FloriaTosca



Series: Helix: Gods, Monsters, and the Rest of Us [3]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Banter, Blind Character, Female Jewish Character, Food, Gen, Internal Monologue, Kashrut, Male-Female Friendship, POV Male Character, mild comedic sociopathy, references to violence and gore, stealth and infiltration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-01
Updated: 2011-11-01
Packaged: 2017-10-25 14:58:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/271581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FloriaTosca/pseuds/FloriaTosca
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A quirky supersoldier turns a social call into an infiltration mission.  Or, two unkillable superpowered Canadian expats gossip about their mutual friends and eat lunch.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lazarus Pays a Visit

The mansion's grounds were ridiculously easy to break into, if you came in through the woods. Apparently, Professor Xiao and her fellow merry mutant do-gooders weren't overly worried about the dangers posed by wayward hikers, rogue squirrels, and paparazzi with a poor sense of direction who were actually looking for the heavy metal band that lived half a mile up the road. _Maybe Little Miss Mindfuck thinks living next door to a bunch of rock stars will make her kids look more normal by comparison,_ Lazarus thought. _At least the good citizens of Salmonberry Falls are already used to weirdness. I didn't even have to threaten to stab that waitress!_ Lazarus's image-projector had shorted out in the rain on his way to the diner, but he was damned if he let the fact that he looked like a sunburned Frankenstein's Monster in a ninja-mummy outfit keep him away from his coffee and pie. Okay, so Mabel or Myrtle or whatever her name had been – something really retro with an “M”, at any rate – had stuck him at an out-of-the-way table, but she hadn't given him any funny looks or nagged him about putting his swords away, and the service had been decent.

The rain had exhausted itself while Lazarus was eating, and the sky was currently as clear as it was likely to get in Northeast Memaloostaguamish County between mid-September and June. Lazarus was grateful. Sure, rain could reduce visibility, but it also meant that you had to be sneaky while being pelted with cold water, and Lazarus's costume was designed more for freedom of movement than weather protection. _What kind of self-respecting Canadian Ninja would I be?_ he thought, _if I couldn't handle bad lighting? Or would that be excessively good lighting? Is the goodness of lighting defined by an objective standard of how well it makes it possible to see things, or by the needs of a particular person in a particular situation? And does energy efficiency matter?_

The woods in the North Cascades Academy's back forty had more than enough undergrowth to make lighting conditions irrelevant in any case. _Damn,_ he thought, _it's a freaking jungle in here. It could be high noon during a heat wave, and I could be wearing a gold lamé cocktail dress, and I'd still be effectively invisible. Wait – why would I be wearing a gold lamé cocktail dress in the middle of the woods during a heat wave? Wouldn't it itch? Although dresses are nice and airy in hot weather... Quick! Must think butch thoughts! My kingdom for a Vietnam War movie reference!_

Between the forest and the mansion's gates lay about a hundred yards of mostly open ground. Not an ideal situation for stealth purposes, but Lazarus had once successfully infiltrated a fortress made mostly of glass. Lazarus sat down in a surprisingly comfortable salal bush on the edge of the forest, got out his binoculars, and scanned the area for security cameras and laser turrets. Not that he expected to find too many of the latter, since everything he knew about Professor Xiao led him to believe she was the kind of bleeding heart who wouldn't want to risk frying her own students. Lazarus took a last long look around around the yard, made a mental note of the probable blind spots of all visible cameras, and set off towards the mansion.

Lazarus managed to reach to reach the gates of the mansion's inner courtyard without being perforated by any motion activated machine guns hidden in rhododendrons. _And a good thing, too,_ he thought. _I mean, I can handle the blood loss and crap, but feeling dozens of little chunks of lead get squeezed out of my body as the wounds heal is just creepy._ He ducked neatly underneath a security camera and considered the best way to get past the gate. _Hmmm... bluff my way in pretending to be a pizza delivery guy? It has been a long time since I got to engage in any proper subterfuge. But I'd be right in this camera's line of sight if I tried to use the intercom, and then they'd be able to tell I'm not really dressed for the job. Or – I could sneak back to the main road, order a pizza, mug the delivery guy for his uniform, and sneak in that way. Or I could just pretend to be a Jehovah's Witness and go through the front. They'd at least have to open the door to tell me to go away. Only problem is, I'm not really dressed for that, either. Damn, this is the first time in my life I wish I'd accepted that copy of **The Watchtower**. Props always help your credibility._

Lazarus sighed, leaned back against the stone wall, and discovered that it wasn't as smooth as it had looked from across the lawn. Upon closer inspection, there were enough cracks and protrusions in the stonework for Lazarus to climb it, at least if the ubiquitous Memaloostaguamish County rain hadn't left any slick or slimy patches.

It had.

Lazarus slid about eighteen inches and finally caught himself on a trellis supporting some kind of flowering vine. _Really,_ he thought, as he resumed his ascent, _Are they trying to make this place easy to break into? If you want plants up against your walls, at least get the ones with big stabby thorns!_

Lazarus reached the top of the wall without further incident, vaulted into the inner courtyard with catlike agility, and landed in a gooseberry bush. “Ow! Who the hell designed this landscape, the Dark God of Dramatic Irony?” He looked around the yard to see if anyone had been alerted by his outburst, and continued, much more softly, “And who grows gooseberries nowadays, anyway? I thought they only ate them in, like, Victorian England and crap.” He picked his way out of the thorns and continued muttering, “Tall, Green, and Scaly really needs to update her cooking style. Why couldn't I have fallen into a bed of arugula? That would have been a lot less painful.”

Upon further investigation, Lazarus had landed in the kitchen garden. There was, in fact, a bed of arugula, although it was too far away from the wall for Lazarus's purposes. There was also, between the fruit trees, bean trellises, raised beds of unidentifiable sinister-looking green things, and a rosemary plant of awe-inspiring dimensions, plenty of cover. Lazarus crept up to the back door, got out his lock picks and plastic explosives, and discovered that the door was, in fact, propped open a crack. He shook his head. _Honestly,_ he thought, _it's like they're not even trying to keep me out. Where's the fun in that?_ He sighed a little, and opened the ancient-looking wooden door as quietly as possible. As expected, it creaked, but Lazarus wasn't particularly worried by this. _If they didn't hear me in the garden, I really don't think this is going to do it._

After a cursory glance to determine that no burly mutants wielding baseball bats were guarding the doorway, Lazarus slipped inside. He padded a few steps into the hall without anyone jumping out at him, took a moment to bask in his awesome ninja skills, and then thought, _Okay, this is getting kind of weird._

“Hello? Hello! Mutants! I'm infiltrating your base-slash-boarding school, here. Now, I know I'm a master of stealth and all, but I thought you guys had some kind of security precautions. Aren't you worried about people just waltzing in and stealing your fancy superhero tech? Lazarus stopped walking and danced forward a few steps. “Or salsa-ing, in my case.”

Lazarus heard a soft thud from the direction of the staircase at the end of the hall. “You seemed so determined to sneak in here undetected, it seemed best for everyone to stay out of your way,” said Lazarus's new companion, as she stood up and dusted herself off. She stretched, popped a claw, scratched herself, and continued, “No point in getting blood all over everything if you were in one of your 'leave-no-witnesses' moods.”

Lazarus took a long look at his surroundings. “Yeah, I've heard blood's a bitch to get out of old wood. So why send you to talk to me and not that Asian stoner kid who's immune to everything? I know you're damn hard to kill, Tomo, but you're not stab-proof.”

“Sparky didn't send me. I just thought that if you came all this way, you either wanted to see me, Shoshi, or Adina, and talking to me is probably the safest option for you.”

“Now that is a blatant lie,” Lazarus protested. “Adina thinks I'm awesome and you know it! All the little kids do. Damned if I know why. And I'm pretty sure Shoshannah secretly likes me.”

“Why? I thought she'd made it pretty clear that she's immune to your sociopathic charms.”

“Because, despite knowing that I can heal from just about anything and wouldn't press charges, she still hasn't stabbed me! Not even once!”

Tomo sighed a little. “Laz. You do realize, she's a fairly observant Jew, right? And a vegetarian?”

“How could I forget? Goddamn holier-than-thou bacon-depriving hippie wench! So, is there some bit in Leviticus that forbids edged weapons?”

“I don't think so. So, okay, Shoshi keeps kosher. Well, sort of kosher. She said that actual Orthodox Jews are stricter that she is. But anyway, there's the whole separate utensils for meat and dairy thing, only Shoshi's a vegetarian, so she only needs one set for cooking. But people are made of meat-”

“So she can't stab me with a cheese knife for religious reasons, and because she's a big green scaly hippie, she only has cheese knives.” Lazarus paused to ponder this for a moment. “I think this may be the first time organized religion has actually made my life easier!”

“And as for why we didn't send Lucas down to investigate,” Tomo said, “It's because Lucas's parents haven't quite realized yet that their kid's a bloody tank, and they'd throw a fit if they learned the school was sending him up against heavily armed mercenaries without backup.”

“Parents these days. So, who's Sparky? Anyone I know?” Lazarus asked.

“She normally goes by Phoenix. Bossy girl who can fly and shoot laser beams and crap like that. I think she's an energy absorber, technically.”

“Right, the hot redhead who is Not A Suicide Bomber.”

“Of course she isn't. Oh, wait... you're talking about something specific, aren't you?”

“Yeah. It's sort of a complicated story, actually. Anywhere we could sit down? Lazarus looked around the room hopefully, but the only chairs were a couple of straight-backed wooden ones that looked about a hundred years old, next to a small antique end table that couldn't have held half of Lazarus's weapons and equipment.

“Hmm... what time is it?” Tomo asked.

“There's a clock right over- oh, right. Quarter to one.”

“The lunch stuff should still be out. We could use the kitchen and bug Shoshi while she cooks.”

“Sounds good to me,” Lazarus said. “Whatever would that girl do without us to help her loosen up?”

“I think she'd find the strength to go on somehow,” Tomo said dryly, as she led the way to the kitchen.

Lunch consisted of build-your-own sandwiches, deviled eggs, carrot and celery sticks, fresh fruit, corn chips, disturbingly healthful-looking cookies, and reheated orzo-tomato-artichoke-cheese casserole left over from last night's dinner. “It's actually pretty good,” Tomo told Lazarus.

“If it's that good, why was so much left over?” Lazarus asked, as he poked the casserole suspiciously with a serving spoon.

“Because Shoshi cooks in vats,” Tomo said.

Lazarus and Tomo loaded their plates and sat down at the mostly-deserted table. Their only companions were a student who looked like Jaye Davidson's _Crying Game_ character in her teenage goth years and a sexy butterfly lady drinking something out of a giant cocktail glass with her tongue. Good. No hot bossy redheads. Not that Lazarus had any scruples about talking about people in their presence, but the interruptions might have become annoying.

“Okay, so I was in Nebraska in July, trying to sneak into some business offices to pick up some incriminating documents or other. I think it was notes from some research project about turning corn into mind-control serum. You know how the Prairies get in the summer?”

“I've been through it a few times, yes.”

“Well, Nebraska's worse. Which is important to this story, even though the building itself had air conditioning,” Lazarus continued. “So I was sneaking around, doing my ninja thing, and I noticed this shiny-looking redhead in one of the other rooms talking to a guy in a suit and a couple of security goons. At first things are pretty calm – the door's not fully shut, so I can hear some of what's going on, and they're asking questions. Like an interview, not an interrogation. It's office hours, and I'm in disguise, so I can afford to hang around and eavesdrop a little without blowing my cover. At first I think the girl's just wearing glitter makeup or sweats really prettily or something, but eventually she starts really glowing. Which is apparently a bad thing, since she keeps saying 'I need to cool off now, you guys have to let me go! I'm burning up!' Things like that. But the guy in the suit just had his goons shut the door and close the blinds. And then there were some thudding noises and a flash of really bright light – as in, I could see the glow through the blinds – and then out walks the redhead, looking like she just spent two hours in a steam bath. She glares at me, tells me 'You saw nothing,' and then stalks off to do whatever while I get on with my mission. I have no idea what happened to the corporate guys.”

“Aw, screw 'em, anyway,” Tomo said. “How's the pasta stuff?”

“It... doesn't taste as healthy as it probably is,” Lazarus admitted. “How are the cookies?”

“Tasty,” Tomo said. “A bit chewy, moist, slightly crunchy around the edges.”

“Hey, Shoshi,” Lazarus yelled, in the vague direction of the kitchen, “What kind of cookies are these?”

Shoshannah walked into the dining room still wearing an oven mitt on one massive, clawed hand. “And it's lovely to see you again, too, Lazarus,” she said, a bit dryly. “And the cookies are vegan oatmeal-apple-pecan. Are you interested?”

“Only if they're made from real vegans. None of these slackasses who still eat honey.”

“I'm afraid I didn't run background checks,” Shoshannah said. “Would you like me to do so in the future?”

“Definitely! It would give me that extra little bit of confidence in your work, and anyway, it's not like you have anything better to do with your time, do you?”

Shoshannah rolled her eyes, and, in lieu of a counter-argument, took off her oven mitt and thwapped Lazarus on the ear with it.

“Hey, wait!” Lazarus glared at Tomo. “You told me this couldn't happen. Because of kosher cross-contamination rules and stuff.”

Tomo shrugged. “Maybe the rules are different for blunt objects.”

“I'm pretty sure skin contact with a living person doesn't count as 'meat,'” Shoshannah said. “Otherwise we'd have to wear gloves to grate cheese.  And even if it did count, you still have the top half of your mask on.”

“Well, that's just great,” Lazarus sighed. “I don't have to worry about being stabbed anymore, just a future filled with constant unprovoked bludgeonings.”

“Yep, that sounds about right,” Tomo said, with what Lazarus considered a distressing lack of sympathy.

“Except for the unprovoked part,” Shoshannah added.

“Okay, a future filled with constant provoked bludgeonings. But still! Is that anything for a man to look forward to?”

“You could learn to be polite to people bigger than you are who make you free food?” Shoshannah suggested.

Lazarus paused to contemplate the possibility. “Actually, I think it would be simpler to learn to deal with a little extra blunt trauma. I already have healing factor."

**Author's Note:**

> The bit about Shoshi and the kitchen knives was inspired by an anecdote in Sara Kasdan's "Love and Knishes."


End file.
